EPT![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/DoctorHelvetica/bannersau550x330.png)
Duel of Fantasies: The Fight You Always Dreamed Of...
TeamLiquid Battle Report by DoctorHelvetica
Analysis by Kwark
The Stage is Set
The hype surrounding the GOMtv special match was incredible; I have never seen the foreign fans so excited. My news post Clash of the Titans brought forth a frenzy of excitement the likes of which surprised even me.
On this day, 3/1/09, Bisu and Jaedong would clash in a series that would prove to be one of the best ever. More than one hype thread was made, the live report thread attracted over 2000 posts. On Sunday morning, I got up with a kind of excitement that is rarely associated with waking up early on a weekend. But this was different.
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/DoctorHelvetica/jaedongbisu1.png)
The stars arrive!
The kings walk into the studio to a roar from the audience. After a brief interview and some banter from Daniel Lee and Nick, the game is set to begin after viewing the players stats. Jaedong is rated incredibly high by the experts and fans, as well as Bisu. However when it comes time to view the stats the players gave eachother...
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/DoctorHelvetica/jaedongbisudiss.png)
Someone has been playing with their mouth recently...
Bisu gave Jaedong a 5/10 in Macro and Defense. Defense is pretty obviously Jaedong's weak point, but 5/10 is a rating I'd expect to see on Mumyung; not Jaedong. A 5/10 in macro is an even huger diss, considering the almost flawless late-game and multitask of Jaedong. Lee Jae Dong, in good manner, gives Bisu very good stats. Will Bisu be forced to eat his insult? The clock is ticking.
Game One
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuJJls-0F4o&feature=related
Jaedong spawns in the 7 o clock position as the yellow zerg, Bisu at 1 o clock as the brown protoss. The tension could be cut with a knife as the game began, that early game drag time occupied with the thoughts and pondering of commentators, fans, and the players themselves. "What will they do?"
Bisu builds a pylon at his ramp, the apparent opening to a Forge FE build. Jaedong does a standard 9 pool build to lay on the early pressure, perhaps hoping for a ling run by on a map such as Andromeda with a very large ramp. Bisu warps in 2 cannons as quickly as possible, an apt defense for the coming ling harass.
The zerglings arrive, and swarm the 2 cannons that protect the warping nexus and main base. Fortunately for Jaedong, 3 lucky zerglings manage to slip up the ramp and harass probes. Bisu immediately warps a cannon in his mineral line and with some very impressive probe micro, prevents the zerglings from doing any significant damage.
Jaedong double expands to the natural and mineral-only, Bisu adds a gateway below his ramp and soon starts the Core > Citadel > StarGate tech. This is the Bisu build, the build that defeated sAviOr 3:0 at the height of his ZvP domination. Could Jaedong handle it?
Jaedong starts a spire at his natural, then begins a hydra den in his main and a 4th hatchery at the mineral only. Bisu pops out a few corsairs and a dark templar and begins a bit of pressure with 3 zealots and 1 dark templar. A dragoon harassing Jaedongs newly added 4th expansion is killed quickly by zerglings and the zeal/dt force comes to wreck some havoc.
The zealots are overwhelmed by lings and the DT is chased away when the ovie arrives. Things don't look so terrific for Bisu. A single Dark Templar makes it into Jaedong's main, killing 3 drones before it is chased away by Hydras.
A force of 5 lurkers create a small contain outside of Bisu's natural. Bisu begins teching to observers to break the contain as soon as possible. A lurker burrows off the cliff of Bisu's mineral only, allowing him to hit some of the probes, delaying Bisu's economy for a short while. Jaedong appears to have the clear advantage in this game.
Bisu breaks the contain as soon as he gets observers and immediately pushes out with a pretty large army. He pushes straight into Jaedong's 3rd, Jaedong lacks the adequate defense, however he immediately responds to losing his 3rd with a lurker drop near Bisu's gateways. When zealots and high templars arrive, he spreads his lurkers out to make it difficult to psi storm efficiently. The lurkers do significant damage, while Jaedong simultaneously pushes out with a lurker ling army.
Jaedong reaches Bisu's natural, by which time the lurker drop has been cleared and the overlords chased away by corsairs. Jaedong's army begins the assault but is absolutely decimated by psionic storms, without doing any profound damage. Bisu clears the zerglings in his 3rd out to take it. Jaedongs advantage seems to have been lost, his army mostly gone and Bisu's mostly untouched. Jaedong takes both islands in the meantime.
Suddenly, a Dark Templar drop wipes out the 12 o clock island and Jaedong responds with a defiler ling drop. Bisu decides that this is good time to push directly into Jaedong's base with his huge ground force, he is pushed back by good swarm placement.
Jaedong throughout the entire battle for the center, fails to do enough damage to Bisu's army and is forced to tap out. Bisu maxed out, while Jaedong fails to go above 100 supply. GG.
Game One Analysis, By Kwark
Bisu spawned at 1 on Andromeda with cross positions going for double scout. Double scout is safe against 9 pool and allows P to recover against 12 11. Bisu keeps scouting probes rather than holding his probes on 13 as usual. This adaption is a reaction to the size of the map where late scouting means you'll be ready to 13 nex before you have the scouting information to do it. Scouting overpool speed he goes 2 cannons and for some reason moves his probe out of JD's main which he really cannot afford to do because he needs to keep an eye on that hat to see what JD is making and stay within sight of that min line to keep his probe alive.
Bisu's probe block was late and a little sloppy but was still very effective. Also the build he used (8p scout, 11 forge scout, 15p, 16, 16c, 18n) gives him a second pylon in his main to cannon off. His immediate reaction of making a cannon is excellent because the 150 cost is far less than the potential loss of not making one and the cannon is useful against muta anyway. Even if your probe micro is excellent, as Bisu's is, Zergs will often simply attack the nexus and force the probes to come to the lings. A cannon does the opposite, forcing the lings to come into the min line where they can be killed.
Bisu then just ran away with the probe count. At the time of the rush he was on 20 probes to 11 drones, a minute later it was 29 probes to 17 drones. Add into that the scouting information of getting a probe in and Bisu was significantly ahead. He knew what JD was doing and was ahead in economy. What I think he should have done is made 7 gateways and smashed into 9 with everything he had, making it two gas each. He was economically ahead and if he invested fully in a zeechon attack I don't believe JD could save 9. Instead Bisu went for 2 gateway darks while taking his mineral only. His dark play was sexy and a good attempt but clearly JD saw it coming and had trained very carefully in always having an overlord in each base. What Bisu tried to do wasn't bad but it gave JD the option to defend against it if he played well whereas mass zeechon doesn't give the same options.
The macro advantage still showed though and JD couldn't resist Bisu's army and didn't even try, instead opting for drop play. The drop made several times its cost but it didn't matter, with both players on 3 bases Bisu was considerably ahead. JD opted for fast hive, sacrificing map control in exchange for extremely secured bases in the island. Bisu did excellently to hit the island before it got established. JD spent his time making the lamest defences he could because his army couldn't face Bisu in an open field. Bisu should have made reavers early to counter the swarm lurkers because his lowtech army simply couldn't engage. By sticking at lowtech units he allowed JD to defend expansions with minimal armies and abuse swarm. Hi plagued zealots were worthless against lurkers. However, while he needed reavers to finish JD off he didn't need lurkers to hold map control and starve JD out. The zealots continued to be completely ineffective against plague but Bisu had the economy to keep up production and hold 5 while denying 11. GG.
Game Two
 |  |  |
 Bisu | Destination |  Jaedong |
| 65 - 37 | 31-32 | 57 - 34 |
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PraivrliWT0&feature=related
Jaedong spawns as the red zerg at the bottom, Bisu as green at the top. Jaedong tries to mask his 12 hatch build by blocking the probe (which gives off the appearance of an aggressive build) but the probe runs through and Jaedong immediately expands. A probe at the 3rd almost kills a drone moving to expand, but he builds an extractor and cancels it, regenerating the drones health. Bisu uses excellent probe micro to block the 3rd hatchery and even builds a pylon in the hatchery location.
Jaedong's 3rd goes up and he once again opts for Spire before Den. Jaedong takes a 4th and masses lings near Bisu's natural. Jaedong busts the natural, takes out an assimilator and then runs by into Bisu's main. Meanwhile he snipes Bisu's corsair with scourge. The incoming shuttle is deftly sniped as well.
Bisu fails to damage Jaedong, and after that much money in corsairs and the shuttle lost he is overran by Jaedongs hydras. Bisu taps out. GG
Game Two, Analysis by Kwark
Bisu's opening build was correctly adapted to JD's and ideal. He made his forge late, made just one cannon and got his tech up as fast as he could. His probe harass of JD's third was excellent and really hurt JD's macro while consistently scouting. Running his scout probe out was plain bad, the lings didn't have speed and he was next to the mineral line. He could have kept the probe there until lair finished. Of course you do eventually have to check the nat because tech buildings can be made there but not until the lair finishes. The stargate is mandatory in PvZ because the P absolutely has to know what the Z is doing. If you have a scout probe in their base you can hard counter them. 1 stargate sair is not really useful against muta nor hydra and I don't understand why he did this. He did the same in game 1, if you have a probe in their base keep it near the mineral line and keep drilling it away from the lings. Unless he gets speed you should be safe.Bisu defended well against the speedling attack and played well to have what he needed to hold it. However he really should have blocked the ramp better. You could argue that blocking the ramp with his zees left his cannons vulnerable to a second wave but that could easily be prevented just by sending out another scout probe for early warning. In my opinion his mistake was making 4 corsairs and then losing some, too few to do anything (the critical mass for killing stacked scourge without loss is 5) but enough to take a big bite out of his eco. By wasting zealots and suiciding sairs he lost all offensive potential and let JD go crazy on 4 bases with mass drones. Losing the shuttle was the nail in the coffin as JD just pushed further and further ahead. I don't think he should have gone corsairs or robo, there was simply no need given the scouting information he had. His reaversair harass was really late and was completely destroyed. Then JD just overran him.
GG
Game Three
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCptYAojypM
Jaedong spawns the yellow zerg in the bottom, Bisu the orange protoss at the the top right. Jaedong opens with a 9 pool, while Bisu yet again decides on a Forge FE. Jaedong takes the natural and mineral-only, while Bisu constructs a sim-city that Jaedongs zerglings can't penetrate.
Bisu scouts the natural that he wasn't aware Jaedong had, the commentators are quickly excited. Bisu meanwhile, opts for the Bisu Build getting an early citadel. Jaedong then takes a 4th expansion, while Bisu scouts effectively with his first corsair. The corsairs are chased away by scourge when Bisu moves out to the center with a small force. Jaedong morpsh 2 sunks in his nat to avoid the harass. However he loses a large bit of his army in an encounter.
Bisu find Jaedongs other expansion and begins attacking with his zealot force. Jaedong sends a huge force of zerglings in but not in time to save the hatchery. Bisu's army is cleaned up, but they did their damage.
Bisu continues his pressure and after taking down the expansion at 9, Jaedong can't get more expansions than Bisu. A dark templar block prevents Jaedong from doing an effective counter while a corsair fleet wreaks havoc across the map. Bisu's army grew and soon decimated the units that gave Jaedong map control. Massive storms on Hydra's and Jaedong's inability to do damage to Bisu and Jaedong taps out. GG
Game Three Analysis, By Kwark
Bisu scouted first and, as in game 2, reacted appropriately to the scouting information. One of my real pet peeves in Protoss progamers is not adapting to the Zerg. Bisu went 11 forge, 13 nex, cannons against no speed overpool. Getting the probe in was really nice, very cool slide at the end. Bisu got to know exactly what JD was up to and he recognised the build and adapted into a timing attack against the 4th base. To be honest the rest of the analysis is pretty much the same as what SuperDanielMan and Tasteless said. They were reading the situation with the benefit of knowing exactly what JD was doing, but so was Bisu. He pressured well and took down 9 while expanding himself. At 3 base apiece Bisu was surging ahead and while JD had map control for a while, at the price of 9, Bisu blocked it smoothly with darks and a wall at his nat. The corsair switch was textbook Bisu, not an integral part of his strategy but effective in his hands and making him safe against muta. Bisu rebuilt a new army off their equal base sites, moved out and took the win. There were a few battles going either way but all JD could do was break even and the gateways and good storms against hydras eventually took their toll.
GG
Game Four
|  | |
| Bisu | Colosseum II | Jaedong |
| 65 - 37 | 17-14 | 57 - 34 |
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0rASRlvHgM
Jaedong spawns the green zerg in the 10 o clock position, Bisu the teal protoss at 4 o clock. Bisu opens with a 1 gate, strange for a 4 player econ map. Jaedong opens 12 hatch, which might spell trouble with any early pressure from Bisu.
The harass proved ineffective, Jaedong follows up with 3 expansions, 3 gas. He techs to lurkers while Bisu gets corsair tech and adds a citadel and 2nd gate. The lurker defense makes Bisu unable to do any significant damage is forced to defend against lurker and mutalisk harass.
Unfortunately, Bisu ends up spread to thin, Jaedong doing massive damage to his well defended natural and following up with rape in his undefended main. Bisu is helpless against Jaedong's offensive play and taps out. GG.
Game Four Analysis, by Kwark
Bisu opened 1 gate zee into FE. I flat out don't like this build on this map. It's too open and JD is too good at micro. If Bisu could reliably outmicro his opponent then I'm sure it'd be good but this is JD, what works against Bisu's practice partners on SKT (lol) might not work here. Cross positions hurt him a lot too, losing a zealot that would have gotten home safely on shorter distances and having less time to harass. It didn't leave him that far behind (although I really don't like it vs 9 pool speed) because JD went 12 11 but it wasn't ideal. Bisu had little scouting information, knowing that JD opened 3 hat gas but not where he went from there. Lurks on the high ground of the 2nd nat really fuck P over, hydra breaks are very dangerous on Colosseum and mutas are dangerous too. Trying to defend against all of them with a few sairs, 2 gate speedlots and a few spread cannons left him spread too thinly to defend against mutas in the hands of a player like JD. Against players with micro that good you need to know what you're facing or just blind counter and autolose if you're wrong. Spreading yourself really thin isn't going to cut it. Feel free to try and cover all your options if you're sure you can recover later in the game on ICC, it's safer, but against a player who can exploit a slight weakness like JD can you will lose. JD didn't even go for Bisu's main which was utterly undefended. He attacked the strongest point and still did huge damage to Bisu. Bisu really had to scout and try and get some read on his opponent, instead, as he did in game 1 and 2 he moved his scout probe home far too early.
Bisu tried to buy some time by suiciding his zealots which saved him his nat but it didn't matter. By losing that many corsairs, cannons and zealots for absolutely no damage done he had lost the game. To give you an idea of the scale of what happened, JD ended up on 83 control to Bisu's 59 psi. If it were the other way round Bisu would be even in this game, this way round is simply over. Bisu tried to hit JD before he got the hydra out, trying to do some damage against mutaling but the timing window was long gone. Hydra were out in big numbers with their upgrades and the mutalisks dispatched stormers and cannons leaving Bisu unable to resist the hydralisks. GG.
Game Five
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFjTTN-9D8U
After 4 rapes, two from each player, the deciding moment has begun on the most imbalanced map in the pool. The anticipation is thick in the air. Get ready to be disappointed.
Jaedong spawns the purple zerg at 10 o clock. Bisu the teal protoss at 4 o clock. Bisu does a 1 gate build, blocking his ramp with probes and zealots against the 9 pool speed laid down by Jaedong. He builds a fast nexus at the mineral only and soon Jaedongs zerglings arrive.
He kills the probe and manages to slip 7 zerglings in Bisu's main! Immediately, the ramp is broken and Jaedong rallies his zerglings into Bisu's main. The flood of zerglings can't be stopped and Bisu taps out. GG. Disappointing rape, due to mismicro.
Game Five Analysis, By Kwark
Bisu opened with a similar build to game 4, but this time defence orientated. I'm going to admit I like his build here. It's very unusual but it's not really bad when you're reasonably sure your opponent will go pool. Here's why. 1 hatchery ling speed builds are awful at taking ramps off P, even off 1 gate Ps. They simply cannot make enough lings to break the ramp. This means that Bisu can FE, as he would normally (although this time to his min only) and use zealots instead of cannons without risk. If JD opened 12 11 he would have the unit production to overpower the zealot wall but off 1 hatch he has no offensive potential and a big economic deficit off the bat. Bisu's FE gives him the probe production to rival a zerg powerdroning which means JD cannot easily recover that deficit even if he macros his ass off and those extra zealots make a midgame timing attack extremely dangerous.
I really like Bisu's build here and I think it would place him firmly ahead of JD's speedling stuff which is simply useless against a ramp walled with that many zealots. Which would be relevant if the ramp was walled.... Which it wasn't...
.
Just to give the stats of it when the wall failed. JD, 1 hatch, 1 building. Bisu, 1 nexus, 1 building. JD, 10 lings. Bisu, 3 zealots + ramp. JD, 9 drones with drone production completely halted. Bisu, 18 probes with probes still pumping and probe production to rival JD's drone potential. There is simply no denying that this build was very advantageous against JD's opening, the probe count says it all.
Bisu must be hating himself. Such a stupid way to lose and his build was clever and had worked perfectly, with JD handing him an advantage on a silver platter. I'm frustrated by it too, not simply because I really wanted an epic game 5, not just because Bisu had the advantage and I love Bisu but also because this epic series still doesn't give me any clue about who is better, Bisu or JD. It was so anticlimatic, both owning twice, both getting owned twice and then a game where Bisu should have won and JD did win. You could see it in their faces, JD was disappointed that he didn't get to prove himself and Bisu was frustrated that he threw the game.
A real pity.
A King is Crowned
Jaedong takes the series 3-2, after four extremely high quality games and one disappointing fluke, but an entertaining series none the less. Bisu and Jaedong are both obviously disappointed by game 5, Bisu saying he had the game won but his micro unfortunately failed him, Jaedong saying "This series isn't over..."
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/DoctorHelvetica/jaedongwins.png)
The legend killer takes another victim and the spoils.
Thus one of the best series in history is over. One can only hope for a Bisu vs Jaedong OSL finals, a Best out of Five between them has proven to produce some of the most exciting and impressive games ever witnessed in the history of BroodWar. An exciting match, a sad conclusion, a promising future. This was the duel of fantasies.
![[image loading]](http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/6513/jdvsbisutwo.jpg)
